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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2009;137:1-9
© 2009 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Presidential Address

Cardiothoracic surgery: A specialty divided or as one

Department of Surgery, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash

Received for publication September 22, 2008; accepted for publication October 28, 2008.

^_* Address for reprints: Dr Douglas E. Wood, MD, University of Washington, Department of Surgery, 1959 NE Pacific Street, Box 356310 Room AA-115, Seattle, WA 98195-6310. (Email: dewood@u.washington.edu).

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In January 1865, Congress approved the 13th Amendment to the United States, which abolished slavery and signaled the end of a devastating civil war that threatened to divide our nation. At the same time, but on the other side of the world, Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of 4 onboard the schooner Grafton shipwrecked on Auckland Island, a remote godforsaken place in the fierce expanse of ocean between New Zealand and Antarctica. Year-round freezing rain, howling wind, and lack of adjacent shipping make Auckland Island one of the most remote and forbidding places on Earth. To be shipwrecked there meant almost certain death. Yet Captain Musgrave and his crew survived for 2 years in the face of incredible odds and set out on an epic voyage of self-rescue, probably one of the most courageous ever attempted, and preceding by 50 years a remarkably similar and more famous journey by Sir Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance.

Incredibly, at the same time that Musgrave and his crew were learning to survive, another ship, the Invercauld, wrecked at the northern end of Auckland Island, only 20 miles away but separated by impassible cliffs, chasms, and dense subalpine shrub. The crew of the Invercauld faced far better odds than the crew of the Grafton, with better resources and topography and with the advantages of numbers as there were 25 men aboard the larger ship. However, in stark contrast to Captain Musgrave, the captain of the Invercauld fell apart under the daunting challenge of a shipwreck in such a primitive landscape and seemingly hopeless circumstance. Nineteen of the 25 aboard the ship survived the initial wreck, but chaos ensued, and at the time of rescue 1 year later, only 3 were still alive. There was no camaraderie to bind them, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. E. Wood and F. Farjah Training, certification and practice of cardiac and thoracic surgeons in Europe: a comparison of the members of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery and the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons Eur J Cardiothorac Surg, March 1, 2010; 37(3): 511 - 515. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]